Silence means Suffering

When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable, But he who restrains his lips is wise.  Proverbs 10:19

I have several spiritual gifts that are not anything that worthy. 
The gift to annoy people. 
The gift to talk as loud as a blow horn.
The gift to fill empty space with random thoughts and ideas (nonsensical)  
The gift to make everyone my friend whether they know it or not. 
The gift to get countless eye rolls or head spins over my ideas of brilliance. 

One GIFT I do not have....THE GIFT OF SILENCE. 

The problem with silence is even if words are not exiting my lips they are screaming between my ears. 
I found that out the hard way Monday. I had all these ideas on what I was planning on doing for the day. Unfortunately, my Monday turned out like Mondays are known for.
It went to Hell in a Handbasket.
I sat home in silence all day. I cleaned, I cooked, I tried to fill the hush when the voices got too loud. I sought God for a voice bigger than my own and I even blared music. 
But the silence was still deafening. 

"Silence" was the theme of my partner Monday.
"Silence" was the theme of our run today. 

Like anything, if you work at it long enough I think you will get better at it. But I am not sure that being "Silent" is something I enjoy working on.

Silence often means SUFFERING to me. 
Today proved that well. 
Claudia, earlier in the week, possibly last week even, had planned to do a 8am purposeful trail run. 
Very early my friends starting jumping ship because we all forget it was Opening Day. 
Not real brilliant to run trails on Opening Day. We have done this in the past, you are on your toes for sure with every gun shot. 
After multiple ideas of different techniques to make ourselves suffer we opted for Indian Springs, a tempo run. 

Claudia has been working on her Yoga certification. One of her practices that she is teaching is "SILENCE". 

THE PLAN:
Tempo Run: 2 mile warm up @ a 9:30min/mi. 5 mile Tempo @ a 1/2 marathon pace, 1 mile cool down, shuffle jog to the finish. 
We both brought music and decided we would stay focused and silent during our tempo. 

PROBLEM 1. WE RAN TOO FAST FOR OUR W/U. oops
PROBLEM 2. MY MUSIC PROVED TO BE MORE OF AN ANNOYANCE.

Silence means Suffering. 
It felt good knowing all I had to do was FOCUS on the task at hand. All I had to do was zone in and push myself out of my comfort zone. 
We took turns pulling and dragging each other. At one point, Claudia took off running a sub 8min mile. I knew she had a power song on and that energy would drop down after the song ended. "JIMMY HENDRIX!" She screamed. I was cracking up. 
5 miles of silence. 

RUNDOWN:
Time: 1:09
Pace: 8:41/mi

COLLISION:

Silence means Suffering. 

Tempo runs are not designed to be chatty. " I don't think we should chat..." might have hurt my feelings any other time..But it was too exhausting to string more than a few grunts together. I didn't have the words during our 5 miles. 

A couple things I am learning when it comes to Silence. 

*Respect others. Not everyone wants to chat. 

If I don't know what I am thinking, feeling or the other person isn't at a place they are "listening" silence needs to be implemented. 

Words do fail us. Words confuse us. Words hurt us. 

Silence isn't always a period, sometimes it is a comma, a pause if you will. 

Today in my Silence I was suffering. It hurt. But I knew it was just for a little while. Everything would be better, I just had to work through it. 

Sometimes Silence is suffering. But you have to work through it. You have to listen to yourself, and for me, Listen to a voice bigger than my own. I didn't need vocals to pray. to seek God. 

"My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart." Psalms 73:26

How do you do in SILENCE? What does it mean when you are silent?

Anita!